johnfitzgeralddesign

First world results on a third world budget | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

 Interesting comparison of Cuban healthcare vs. UK healthcare. For me, this was a very interesting point:

The trouble with the NHS, some say, is that it is not a national health service but a national sickness service. The focus is not on keeping us well, but keeping us alive. Hospital intensive care units take priority in the public mind over diet and exercise campaigns.

Cuba is admired by public health experts in Britain and around the world for putting the horse before the cart. Unable to afford too many hi-tech operating theatres, it focuses its efforts on keeping its people well and picking up illness early - when it’s easier and cheaper to treat.

Someone once told me that because the NHS was set up just after WWII, it became incredibly good at acute care, but not so good at prevention and day-to-day stuff.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A police state? Crying wolf wont protect civil liberties

Here’s what I think:

 A couple of dangerous assumptions here:

1. We used to have far fewer protections for civil liberties, so we shouldn’t complain about the present situation

2. New technology allows new intrusions to civil liberties- we should intervene in new ways because we can

I also think the writer is wrong to put (fully justified) anxieties about automatic and compulsory state collection of personal information (id cards, DNA databases etc) and the more questionable libertarian right to smoke in a public place in the same boat.

Where does this assumption that collecting reams of personal data for no immediate use has some kind of benefit come from?

I think the writer is quite right to say that the debate on civil liberties should be nuanced, and that both left and right can get it wrong by being too shrill. However, he then goes on to muddy the waters with some of his own faulty logic…

Even by their fairly hyperbolic standards, this is an entertainingly over-the-top headline from the Evening Standard. I wasn’t worried by it, perhaps because we live on a boat (though shortly after buying our boat, a relative asked me worriedly “but what if the Thames floods?”)

A slightly retrospective post, this. I revised for my first exam in the British Library. In theory, as an undergrad with access to the Birkbeck library, I shouldn’t really be in the British Library. However, they seem flexible on this, and the BL is much better than Birkbeck. For example, they have every book published in the UK, which beats competing with all my classmates for a few key texts. The books are closed access, though, so you have to order them in advance.

The BL also has an incredibly studious atmosphere- no pens or bags in the reading room, spacious and comfortable desks, each with their own little lamp. When I go there, I shift easily into ’study mode’. I find it much harder to do that at Birkbeck- my distractible nature means I’m always breaking my concentration.

A couple of years ago, I ‘downgraded’ to the most basic mobile phone I could get my hands on. I specifically wanted something that wouldn’t need to be ‘upgraded’ in a few months’ time. It was cheap, too.

Why do I resist the relentless upgrades? Partly a desire for simplicity, but also a worry about the consequences of the relentless demand for new mobile phones. Each mobile contains Coltan, a metallic ore used to produce the elements niobium and tantalum. The Democratic Republic of Congo contains 80% of the world’s Coltan reserves. A ticket to prosperity, you might think. Sadly, it seems that Coltan is fuelling conflict in the DRC.

John Le Carré’s recent book, The Mission Song looks at the issue of Coltan in the DRC. I’m a fan of Le Carré- I might give it a read!

[This post also came out from a chat with Sergio- sorry, Sergio, for not getting the name of the mineral right!]

These days, we tend to feel guilty or bad about more and more things, because they have a destructive impact on the world we share with others. Sometimes this can lead to an all-consuming anxiety, feeling like just existing as a normal person in an industrial society is a sin in itself.

How to transform this general anxiety into something more useful?

A good friend of mine, Sergio, gave me something of an answer to this last night. He said:

“When you’re thinking of doing something, and wondering whether that thing is sustainable, imagine what would happen if everyone did the same as you.”

I find this such a useful thought, because it highlights how small choices have big impacts when you look at the bigger picture.

Many conservative thinkers talk about ‘wealth creation’ as a way of reducing poverty. I’m not so sure- to my mind, wealth is a result of distribution of resources, rather than something which is ‘created’ from nothing. I also think that poverty is a prerequisite of wealth, and vice versa.

Having said that, I recently studied (as part of my philosophy course) a good critique of economic redistribution from Robert Nozick. He makes the point that a just redistribution of wealth is not the same as an equal distribution of wealth, in his Wilt Chamberlain example.

I think that Nozick’s argument that redistributing wealth impinges on people’s rights to their ‘just entitlement’ is very compelling. It appeals to the feeling that people shouldn’t be taxed just for being wealthy. But it does rest on the assumption that the distribution of wealth was fair in the first place (!)

I’m a bit undecided on the whole tax question. I can see real value in doing things collectively (hospitals, schools, public transport…) but I also think that the state should interfere as little as possible. Perhaps that means I’m a typical voter, wanting less taxes but more services!

Apologies for the obvious headline

So it looks like Ian Paisley will go into government with the people he said he’d never talk to- no wonder Gerry Adams looks so pleased. I think this is a really positive development, and a major step for both parties. When the DUP and Sinn Féin surged ahead of moderate parties in succesive elections, many people felt that the peace process might stall indefinitely.

Although the development is historic and should be cheered, it’s still shot through with irony. Paisley has made most of his electoral gains on the basis that he would refuse to sit alongside Republicans for much longer than anyone else. Equally, most of the concessions Adams has obtained through the peace process have come because it’s taken unionists of all flavours so long to grit their teeth and sit down with the Sinners.

Another ironic aspect- what was the burning issue which brought the great statesmen together? The prospect of NI voters being hit with a water tax!

I suppose it shows that, for all their tribalism, NI politicians are ‘grown up’ political operators underneath- they might be reluctant to be seen sitting next to their respective bogeymen, but they’re even more reluctant to be linked to a new tax…